


The Sun's Always Rising In the Sky Somewhere

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, M/M, mostly softe with a thin layer of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21883093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: They move in together on a Saturday.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	The Sun's Always Rising In the Sky Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> because sometimes you just want to write about the little shit
> 
> title from [Against Me!'s 8 Full Hours of Sleep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bePBQA30vQ) (god I wish, right?)  
> written to the skitterings of the mouse that has invaded my apartment grrrr

They move in together on a Saturday.

The department finally allowed Jack more than one day in a row off - “It’s the weekend, Jack, can’t you just have a normal weekend?” “Criminals don’t take weekends so neither do we.” - and Jesse talked his boss into letting him take a few days off if he promised to do all the grouting in the bathroom they were putting together.

Jesse hates grouting.

So they take Jack’s SUV and Jesse’s truck and haul everything out of the shitty apartment that Jesse’s been sharing with Genji for far too long, and at this point Jesse’s only partly sure what belongs to him outside of his clothes so he just makes his best guess, Genji will tell him if he accidentally takes something important. Then they go to the tiny studio apartment in the basement of Mrs. Leskiv’s place that Jack got as a temporary crash pad when he got transferred here and somehow never left and get all of Jack’s stuff.

Mrs. Leskiv babbles at them, English flowing into Ukrainian and back again, and presses Tupperware full of honey apple cake and sweet pampushky into their hands. She hugs Jesse and kisses Jack on both cheeks, reaching up to pat their shoulders with powder soft hands and tells them that they’re good boys and they must come for the proper Christmas Day, the one in January. Jack hugs her carefully back and tells her earnestly that if anything goes wrong with her house he’s just a phone call away. 

The bed gets there before they do - their one extravagant purchase. They leave Jack’s things in the car in favor of hauling the packages in and getting it put together. Jack unloads his car while Jesse runs to the nearest department store, suddenly realizing they have no sheets.

With the boxes stacked mostly in the living room and kitchen, the bed looks almost lonely in the bedroom - the room is empty but for sunlight shining off of motes of dust that drift slowly down to the hardwood floor. 

Jack has to look through three different containers until he can find the lube, but once he does they break in the bed as soon as they get it made up. There’s no roommates or well-meaning old ladies around, so they’re able to be as loud as they want, moans and gasps echoing off of the bare floors and empty walls. Afterwards Jack stares at the ceiling as Jesse licks lazy kisses onto his shoulder. 

“It’s ours,” he murmurs into Jack’s skin, and Jack presses a smile against the side of his head.

-x-x-x-x-x-

It’s not the first time for either of them living with someone they were in a relationship with. Jack lived with Vincent for a year, and there was that disastrous period where Jesse was living with Genji and his brother and kind of seeing both of them that he doesn’t like to talk about. This is the first time it’s been real, though. First time it’s been easy. 

Jack does his shifts at the station, going out with Gabriel to track down the criminals of Redding while Jesse goes to whatever construction site he’s at that day. Both of them are at the point where they’re managing as much as doing the labor, and they complain about the paperwork to each other. 

Evenings are quiet - both men work physical enough jobs that they tend to want to relax at night. Jesse pokes Jack in the stomach, tells him that detectives aren’t running after criminals like beat cops do. Jack will poke Jesse right back, asking if he knows that from past experience of running from police. Jesse will give a crooked grin and Jack will get that look in his eyes, and they’ll end up christening yet another surface in the house.

Their house.

Jack ends up being dragged out to Shasta Lake one weekend by Gabriel and some guy he’s dating that insists fishing is something worthwhile. Jack has a great time, ends up bonding with the guy while Gabriel grumbles the whole time about sleeping in the dirt when there’s a perfectly fine cabin for rent just up the road. Gabriel can get a stick up his ass at times, doesn’t like people to know his tousled hair and stubble-surrounded goatee take a ridiculous time in the morning to perfect.

Six fish fill the cooler that Jack lugs home from the trip. Everything is fine until he goes to gut and fillet them, and realizes that they don’t have a single decent knife. They have a few that are good enough and sharp enough for the basic cooking they do, but it’s a motley collection of assorted chipped handles and lengths and metals. Somehow they have a few of Jesse’s paint scrapers and a palette knife mixed in with them as well.

When Jack brings it up to Jesse, his reaction is mostly joy at finding the paint scrapers. Jack sighs and heads off to the store.

Just because they don’t have anything good at home doesn’t mean that Jack doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He comes home with not just a set of knives but a good cutting board, a blender, and a crockpot. Jesse raises his eyebrows in skepticism, but Jack just says “homemade stew” and thumps the crockpot down. After trying the pulled pork Jack makes in it the next night, Jesse blows him right there against the counters.

-x-x-x-x-x-

It’s after the knife incident that Jack looks around their place. Looks at Jesse’s massive book collection that’s all on boards and bricks that he brought home from work. Looks at the tattered couch that Jack’s been hauling from place to place for over a decade. Looks at the bare walls, at the rugless floors, at the mismatched chairs around the kitchen table.

He cracks his knuckles and opens up Consumer Reports on the computer.

-x-x-x-x-x-

When the fridge gives out with a sad whine of its motors like it’s ringing its own death knell, Jack starts researching in between putting all the food out on the porch in the January cold so it doesn’t go bad.

“Would you want black or steel?” he asks Jesse in the morning. 

Jesse shrugs. He pulls the half a bagel in his mouth out long enough to say “I don’t care, darlin’. I trust you,” and kisses Jack goodbye on his way out the door. 

Jack can’t help the small smile on his face as he starts to look at the deals on Kenmore versus LG. 

That night Jesse blinks when he gets home at the large black refrigerator that’s now in place of their old, stained beige one. “You sure we need one that...big?” he says, pushing his hair behind his ear. 

Putting a glass under one of the spouts on the left hand door, Jack comes back a half minute later with a glass full of beer. “There’s a place inside you can install a keg,” he says, as he hands Jesse the glass. 

Jesse drinks it down in one long swallow that makes his stubbled throat work and Jack lick his lips, and then he fucks Jack over the kitchen table. 

Even as his nails scrabble across the scarred wood of the tabletop, the table wobbles slightly back and forth and Jack thinks _the legs are uneven, I wonder how much dining sets cost?_

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jack becomes friends with the people at the local furniture stores. He doesn’t buy anything, not quite yet, but they can tell he has a good eye and cares more about quality than cost. A couch comes in finally that catches his eye - large and soft grey, a sectional that would fit perfectly into the living room. He’s shrewd, cuts a deal with them where if he hauls it himself they’ll knock twenty percent off.

That morning he asks Jesse to switch cars for the day. Jesse shrugs, takes the keys for the SUV. Jack bribes Gabriel with a six pack and a promise of homemade enchiladas and they get the couch home in two trips. The old one Jack puts out on the curb, he’s pretty sure that trash collectors will pick it up. 

When Jesse comes home there’s an odd look on his face. “Baby, what happened to the...couch…” he trails off as he looks at the new sectional in their living room. He looks at it and looks at Jack and Jack can’t quite tell the look on his face so he pulls Jesse down onto it. Jack kisses Jesse until the lines on his face have smoothed out, until Jesse’s digging fingernail marks into the nice new fabric.

A package of tortillas hits them in the head, and Gabriel tells them that the food isn’t going to make itself and he may well vomit into their new fridge. Also the keg in the door is out, don’t they care about their guests? Jack sighs into Jesse’s neck before getting up and throwing the tortillas back at Gabriel.

-x-x-x-x-x-

When Jack goes to people’s places now, he does it with a critical eye. Looks at the rugs in Gabriel’s bachelor pad, scrutinizes how the dining room is laid out at Torb and Ingrid’s place, surveys the bathrooms in Ana’s house. 

Bathrooms!

Who knew that bathrooms could have so much, and so much that needed to be coordinated? Towels that went with each other and didn’t have grease stains and soaps - soap to just wash your hands and soap to get the grime out of Jesse’s nails - and actual bathmats instead of a towel on the floor and a shower curtain that matches and and and -

People have scales, right? That’s a thing. Jack spends two hours comparing brands before getting one that is clear plexiglass and steel and will match everything.

Jesse shrugs and raises an eyebrow when Jack brings it home. “Doc says my cholesterol’s good and the job keeps me fit, you get a physical every six months for the department. The hell do we need a scale for?”

Jack can’t explain that he’s trying to make a place that’s theirs. That they now have a house - a _house!_ \- for the first time in either of their adult lives and he wants it to be perfect, to be perfectly theirs. He opens his mouth and closes it and frowns down at the shining device on the floor.

Jesse sighs, wraps his arms around Jack’s waist. “It make you happy?”

He nods, but he can’t quite articulate that it’s not about the goddamn scale, it’s about everything else. Jesse takes it as it’s given anyways, kisses Jack until they stumble to the bedroom, tripping over a rug that Jack bought last week. 

At least with the new nightstands they have somewhere convenient to keep the lube, and when Jesse accidentally knocks a lamp over it’s a good thing Jack got extra lightbulbs.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Everything gets a little crazy before the Fourth of July. One of them, neither can remember who at this point which is probably good because blame would start being thrown around, had an idea to have a big party - sort of a belated quasi-housewarming type of thing. Jack gets them a new kitchen table, plus chairs that match. He strikes a deal with his friends at the furniture store, manages to get them a dining room table as well.

He’s so busy putting it together that he just distractedly waves at Jesse when he goes off in the morning, too focused on his screwdriver to look up.

Jack still can’t believe they have a dining room. A dining room! A place for people just to dine. In reality they eat in the kitchen and tend to use the room as where Jack spreads out his case files and Jesse stacks his sketchbooks, but it's the principle of the thing.

They’re both somewhat regretting having the party, but now too many people are coming, too many people are excited to see their place. Only Gabriel’s really come over so far, and Gabriel isn’t someone they have to impress - he saw Jack’s tiny place and the step up from squalor that Jesse was in, nothing could shock him at this point.

The bathrooms and kitchen have been squared away, the dining room looks decent, no one’s going upstairs to their bedroom or the guest bedroom that still isn’t put together…

Jack looks around the living room with a calculated glare. They got rid of the ancient television and got something newer so Jesse can see those how it’s made shows in full HD, they have the couch, there’s a rug that Ana gave them when they moved in that’s under the coffee table he picked up last week.

He narrows his eyes at the boards and bricks that Jesse’s books are on, and starts calculating the footage.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jack is opening the box on the second bookcase when Jesse gets home. He slides his boxcutter shut and shoves it in a pocket before looking up with a grin. “Hey, I don’t know if you wanted to start moving them over -”

“Go to hell.”

Jack blinks, but Jesse’s already spun on his heel and is silently walking out of the room. He lets the hammer slowly slide out of his hands, not noticing when it falls and makes a mark on the hardwood floor.

He hears the door to the garage slam and winces. The garage is Jesse’s room. Just like the small office upstairs next to the bedrooms is Jack’s, where he has his desktop and keeps his case files and his free weights. They have a big enough driveway that they can park their cars in it, and they only get a few inches of snow a year so they decided the garage would be Jesse’s. It’s where he keeps his tools, the various projects he tinkers on, the half-broken down motorcycle he swears he’s going to get up and running someday. 

It’s not that they’re forbidden from entering each other’s spaces at all, they just have no real need to. It’s a small enough house that they can hear a yell from anywhere, and it’s nice to have a place where you can spread out and be yourself.

Jack spends a minute thinking about what the hell he might have done to set Jesse off, all the while waiting to hear another doorslam, one to indicate that Jesse’s gone outside and left. When it doesn’t come, he knocks gently on the door to the garage before entering.

A single light is on, at the table that Jesse is leaning against with his back to Jack. Squinting against the silhouette Jack realizes that the table, now holding a toolbox and a stack of books, is their old kitchen table.

“Jesse -”

“Do you even want me here?” He says it quietly, and Jack blinks to himself once to make sure he heard right and then again at what Jesse had said.

“What?”

“I’m not jokin’. Do I live here anymore? Because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.” The corners of Jesse’s eyes and the corners of his mouth are tight, and it’s that which tells Jack that he’s not joking.

Jack takes a half step forward, but Jesse’s body language doesn’t bend at the movement so he stops. “Jesse. What do you mean? We’re building a home -”

 _“You’re_ buildin’ a home, Jack!” Jesse’s arms wave in the air, encompassing the house. “You’re turnin’ this into Better Homes and Gardens by John Francis fuckin’ Morrison. Every time I come home another thing is trashed. Another part of me is just, goddamn gone. You spend more time with those assholes at the furniture place than you do with me, and I swear it’s worse than cheatin’ because every time you’re with them I know when you get home another thing is gonna be thrown out.”

“You said you didn’t care.”

“About the _fridge,_ Jack. You never once asked about any of the rest of it. You do know I fuckin’ build things for a livin’? Could have make for you whatever you wanted? And instead I come home and there’s a new couch or whatever.”

Jack feels dizzy, like there’s not enough air in the room. “The couch was probably as old as you and the cushions were practically flat, Jesse.”

A breath of silence, before Jesse says quietly, “You kissed me for the first time on that couch, Jack. We slept together for the first time on it. It’s beat to hell and back, but I thought it - that any of it meant something. To us.” 

Jack’s mouth is half open, like he just got punched in the gut. It feels about that way, too. Jesse turns and with a muttered _going for a drive_ he grabs his keys and is out the door.

Stumbling over to the closest seat, Jack sits down. What he’s sitting in cradles him in a familiar way and he opens his eyes from where he’s closed them to look down and realize - it’s the couch. The ancient couch that he’d lugged to the curb months ago, and it had disappeared - Jack had assumed by either the trash collectors or someone who really needed a beat up couch. Instead, however, it was apparently...Jesse.

Jack lets his head fall back, turns it to the side. Breathes in the scent of old fabric squishy foam and Jesse’s tobacco and Jack’s aftershave that have baked themselves in after so many years. It’s like one of his infrequent trips back to Indiana when he hugs his mom and smells her perfume - a scent he didn’t realize he missed until it’s in front of him. 

He turns his head back to get away from the smell and the memories that say that perhaps Jesse was right. He looks around, at Jesse’s tools organized on the big shelving units in big clear plastic boxes. At how one of those boxes has the hint of turquoise and orange in it, familiar shades that make Jack frown and get up. He pulls out the box, cracks the lid. Inside are the chipped dishes that Jack replaced with nice Corelle ware, the bowls that he’d set aside to donate and then forgot about and Jesse must have taken. 

Jack looks around with a sharper eye, now. Sees mugs that have rasps and screwdrivers and pencils shoved in them, mugs that Jack thought he’d pitched. Some that he didn’t, that he’s wondering if Jesse took because he was afraid Jack would throw them away. 

Bits and bobs are everywhere, battered and tarnished but - 

They’re them, Jack realizes. Their relationship, their lives. Their history. 

Jack sits down heavily at the table, traces his fingers over the scratches in it. He can name some of them, here where Jesse tried to use an electric carving knife at their first Thanksgiving together and it skittered off the bone and right into the table. There where Jack was tried to scrape stickers off of an old army lockbox he found at a garage sale and the razor cut into the table and into Jack’s thumb. He rubs a finger absentmindedly over the scar on his hand, over where he can still see the blood drops deep in the crack.

Jack stands up, frowning. At the situation, at Jesse, most of all at himself. He taps his foot on the floor for a few moments before squaring his shoulders and walking determinedly out of the room. He’s got work to do.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“The table’s back.”

Jack snorts himself out of the sleep he’d dozed his way into on the sofa. It’s gotten dark, the only light coming in from the streetlamps outside.

He rubs at his eyes, knuckling away the sleep. Jesse’s face is in darkness and he can’t tell what his expression is. “Yeah.”

“Where’s the new one?” 

“In the garage.”

“With all my tools on it?”

Jack nods. Jesse sinks on the couch next to him. Next to, but a half cushion’s distance between them. That hurts, deep down. At least he can see Jesse’s face now. It’s - neutral. Purposefully so.

He needs to talk first. If he doesn’t then he doesn’t know what he’ll say to what Jesse might - no, he can’t think about what Jesse might say. 

“I’m sorry. For the stuff, but mostly for not thinking of you. Or rather, of thinking of you in the wrong way.” Jack sighs. “I just wanted...a place for us. Just for us.”

A soft sound, that Jack knows is Jesse scraping a thumbnail over a seam in his jeans. “I know you did, that you did it with good intentions.” There’s the quiet crack of Jesse’s knuckles before he leans back. “Still feels like you were pickin’ me out, piece by piece.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack says again. “I wanted to put together a home for us, and forgot about the ‘us’ part, I guess.”

“I was buildin’ a coffee table,” Jesse says meditatively. “One that would have gone with the old table, once I fixed the legs up.”

Jack feels even worse. “God Jesse, I’m -”

“You didn’t know.”

“You didn’t tell me.” They’d had some conversations early on in their relationship, about how Jesse was so easygoing, so go-with-the-flow that he’d let Jack either take over or stress out over taking over. This wasn’t Jesse’s fault, but: “Jesse if I’d known that it was bothering you so much, that you were feeling like this, I would have stopped. You know I would have.”

Jesse stops fucking with his jeans, puts his hand down on the couch, halfway between him and Jack. Jack barely breathes, wondering if the gesture is as important as it feels. “I want to be here Jack. With you. But we gotta make sure it’s really us, and not what you think we’re supposed to be.”

Jack reaches over, takes Jesse’s hand. Tugs, and there’s no resistance. Jesse’s big, shoulders as broad as Jack’s and just as tall. He still fits under the curve of Jack’s arm like this, head nestled along Jack’s collarbone and under his chin like he was built to be there. Something that’s been tense inside of Jack for longer than he’s realized relaxes.

“Tell me about the coffee table.”

Jesse does, going on about stains and woods and joins, only half of which Jack understands. It’s worth it to have Jesse’s voice rumbling against his chest, though.

Eventually he trails off. Jack’s thumb rubs aimless circles on Jesse’s shoulder. “It was gonna be a birthday present,” Jesse says, and Jack doesn’t know if he can feel any worse. He must tense up or something because Jesse’s turning and looking Jack in the face. “Stop that,” he says. “I’m still mad, but stop beatin’ yourself up. You didn’t know.”

“We can sell the things on craigslist, donate them if you want,” Jack says. They have enough money, it wouldn’t hurt them that much. 

Jesse pulls Jack so he’s cradled as much by Jesse as the other way around. “Nah, don’t. The table’s back and I’m gonna fix her up, and most of the stuff we did need.”

“You want the couch back?”

“It’s nice to have a place to crash in the garage. Besides,” he says, slowly pushing Jack down to stretch out underneath him, “This one’s bigger.” 

Jack smiles up at him a bit, pushes Jesse’s hair back so he can see his face in the dim light. “I like a man with priorities.”

“Speaking of which.” Jesse glances over the back of the couch, at where the bookshelves Jack had built were before he dismantled them and put them back in the boxes an hour ago. “Don’t fuck with my books.”

“I won’t. Just let me at least dust them before the party, there’s spiderwebs on the cinderblocks.” 

Jack pulls Jesse down onto him, tries to let his lips say what his words can’t. They’re going to have to talk this through more, but they’re adults. They’ll figure it out.

Besides, he thinks fuzzily as he bites Jesse’s neck and there’s the faint sound of threads snapping as Jesse fists the edge of a cushion tightly, no one would want most of the stuff in their place anyways, after the number of times they’ve defiled it.

One way or another, they’ll figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!  
> come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


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